Homeless for seven months as he purged his soul of the demons that controlled his life, Ruston’s Luke Hockenjos overcame a meth addiction thanks to a praying mother just as he was on the verge of killing a man in a road rage incident.

That in a nutshell is the life of the former Cedar Creek football player who continues to deliver his powerful message to churches, youth groups, halfway houses – anyone who’ll listen – throughout the state. He describes in detail how his life spiraled out of control under the influence of a drug that rarely gives up its patrons, how he was arrested three times on various offenses, but probably should have been incarcerated many more times.

It’s an amazing story of redemption and enthralling to hear how the 26-year-old Hockenjos has gotten from where he was to where he is today, thanks to Cedar Creek teacher Cindy Hockenjos, who prayed for her son without ceasing.

Luke Hockenjos in 2014 during his time involved with meth.(Photo: Contributed photo)

Later you’ll read how he went on a month-long odyssey that took him from Ruston to Shreveport's Broadmoor Baptist Church parking lot – to Natchitoches, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago and to Georgia for a Casting Crowns concert. He also had a near-miraculous experience in Florida and a reunion with a cousin in Orlando who initially spurned him because of his drug habit.

Like so many teenagers, Hockenjos began drinking when he was 13 because he was fat and was getting picked on by some of his peers at school. An older kid, more popular than he, drank, so Hockenjos began drinking to look cool.

“I was a goofy-looking kid, but I wanted that bad boy image,” he said. “My family didn’t have much money.”

He often walked around campus drinking alcohol from a Powerade bottle. The drinking affected his abilities on the football field and on the track for former Cougars coach Corwyn Arledge, currently the athletic director at St. Mary’s in Natchitoches.

“I always knew there was a great kid in there trying to get out, but Luke had some demons he needed to overcome,” said Arledge, who would later provide his former player some assistance on his road to redemption. “Luke was a bit of a loner, but he had a heart so big it should have come in a dump truck.”

After graduation, Hockenjos began hanging with a wild crowd and lost a lot of weight. He remembers someone telling him to get off drugs.

“I figured I could have the lifestyle without the drugs – but every lie catches up to you,” he said.

When he was 21, a friend in Ruston offered him meth so he graduated quickly from alcohol, skipping the usual transition through marijuana.

“I had smoked pot a couple of times and I hated it, but with meth, I felt like I could control it. I never saw it as a problem. Everyone else had the problem,” Hockenjos said. “I could get high right in front of you and it became a problem for me the first time I used it. I was a different person when I was on it.”

Working in the Texas oilfields, Hockenjos was gone from Ruston for weeks at a time, but he picked up three DUIs in two states. The first came on Tech Drive in Ruston when he blew a .268 for the Ruston Police Department.

“I quit my job before I got fired and I still didn’t think I had a problem,” Hockenjos said. “My mom was in New York so I had to call and tell her. She bought me one of those cards where you can record you own voice. She recorded, ‘I’ll love you forever.’” And she began praying.

Hockenjos works at a school in Medford, Oregon, recently while on a mission trip with Ellerbe Baptist.(Photo: David Colvin/Contributed photo)

Fired and rehired

His second arrest came the following year when he was drinking in a Corpus Christi, Texas, bar, and was in an altercation and blacked out. He woke up to find himself handcuffed and hauled away to jail where he sat for days. He was fired again but found another job on the drive back to Ruston due to his reputation as a hard worker.

“My mom knew I was out of control, and she was praying,” Hockenjos said.

At 21, he was taking Adderall for his ADD. While at home, his mother controlled the amount, but on the road where he used medicine to excess, which would mellow him out and allow him to stay awake for long stretches.

He fell into the meth dealing arena about the same time.

“Meth is very easy to market, but it’s a scary drug,” Hockenjos said. “It’s what the Japanese gave their pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor. They were able to fly for long distances and stay awake.”

He never kept his drugs long in attempt to avoid arrest, and the money raised from sales disappeared just as quickly.

“You never kept the money long because the druggies will steal it from you. I just spent it. You get rid of it like playing hot potato,” he said.

The third arrest came in Big Spring, Texas, when he was 23. Hockenjos was in a bar with people he didn’t know and a fight broke out. He jumped in his truck to leave and the police were sitting there, waiting. He picked up another DWI and was jailed.

“I had been driving a company truck when I was stopped, so they fired me. But they turned around and hired me back 30 minutes later,” he said.

No longer able to drive the company truck, Hockenjos was forced to get his personal truck.

“I was using so much at the time that I was paranoid,” he said.

In May 2014, Hockenjos moved back to Ruston and started a downward spiral, becoming homeless on Oct. 11, 2014. The owner of the house he was living in found drugs and put him out on the street.

“I wasn’t a very good tenant. I became wild and violent,” he said.

Change my evil ways

A few days later, he was pulled over on Hwy. 167 near Vienna by a Lincoln Parish sheriff’s deputy, Lt. Matt Sims, because he had an emotional flag on his driver’s license and because he was driving “extremely fast toward Dubach.”

“He was very, very angry about getting pulled over, and he started cussing,” Sims said. “I let him vent, as long as he didn’t get physical, and he finally calmed down. He admitted he had used meth in the past and hadn’t slept much in several days.”

Sims said Hockenjos wasn’t high and he assured the deputy he wasn’t going to hurt himself or anyone else. Although he wasn’t arrested, he figured his family had set him up. He called his sister, his father and his mother and cursed them out.

Cindy Hockenjos was on a Walk to Emmaus (prayer retreat) at the Jimmie Davis State Park in Chatham. She ran across the park, fell at the foot of the cross and prayed the prayer of a desperate mother.

“She knew only God could change my evil ways,” he said.

The next day, Hockenjos pulled over and cried. Looking up, he called on God and the devil.

“I said whichever one of you wants me, show yourself and I will be loyal,” he said.

Hockenjos arrived at First Baptist Church of Ruston the next day, put on a bandana, got high and walked in.

“No one asked me to leave and they treated me like a human,” he said.

He returned the next Sunday when former New York mobster and Colombo crime family member Michael Franzese was on the agenda to speak.

“I remember thinking, ‘God, if you can change that guy, you can change me.’ I felt good, but I hadn’t surrendered at that point,” Hockenjos said.

A pursuit toward Ruston ensued at speeds up to 110 mph and both vehicles exited at the Ruston/Dubach exit and turned to cross over the interstate. When the man stopped at a light, Hockenjos intended to push his vehicle off the overpass.

“But when my truck came to a stop, I heard someone say, ‘Son, this isn’t what I have planned for you.’ I turned my truck around and drove away,” Hockenjos said. “When I slowed down, I realized it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me and I remembered Jeremiah 29:11 ('For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.')

“I realized at that point that my future wasn’t to be an outlaw or to sell drugs any longer, but to serve Jesus. I gave my life to the Lord in a Ford F-150 pickup. There was no preacher, no deacon – just me and God.”

That incident also set off one of the strangest odysseys a young man has traversed in a self-imposed effort to purge his soul.

One of the shirts for sale as part of Luke Hockenjos' ministry.(Photo: Submitted photo)

The American odyssey

Hockenjos left Ruston on a sunny morning in 2014 in his Ford pickup with little money, just a few clothes and most of a tank of gas. He drove to Shreveport and spent the night in the parking lot of Broadmoor Baptist Church intent on speaking with the church’s music minister, Herb Armentrout, the following day. Armentrout prayed with him and gave him some gas money.

“I love this young man and am grateful for God’s work in his life,” Armentrout said this week about his visitor.

The money was used for gas to get to Natchitoches to find Arledge, who had gotten little from Hockenjos during his playing days at Cedar Creek.

“I apologized to him for not being the athlete I should have been,” Hockenjos said. “He fed me a hamburger and a Coke and that was the first time I had eaten in days.”

After a brief stop in Ruston to get rid of the last of his drugs, Hockenjos drove to Memphis and stopped at the Bellevue Baptist Church where he visited with a pastor. He was given a food voucher and a tank of gas, allowing him to drive to the Willow Creek Church in Chicago, where he attended a service.

He was trying to sleep in freezing temperatures in the back of his truck when he received a text from his mother. She had secured him a room at a Best Western, so he was able to shower and sleep in a real bed for the first time in several days.

Casting Crowns cast a net

The next day he received a text about a Casting Crowns concert in Georgia. He had liked one of their songs, so he decided to head to the event even though it said online it was sold out. When he put on his best flannel shirt and walked in the venue, he was told it indeed was sold out. But an elderly gentleman walking behind the counter heard his plea and handed him a ticket.

When he woke up the next day, he saw where Casting Crowns was playing their next concert in North Carolina. He drove there and secured a ticket with his last $10.

“I realized then God had me and that I could never be alone,” Hockenjos said.

Without a shower for several days, Hockenjos headed for Pensacola, Florida, with his mother again directing him to a church for solace. He attended a Bible study, was allowed to shower and was given $40 by an old man on a walker. His mother secured him a room at a Super 8 at 777 Miracle Street in Pensacola.

Gassed up in Jacksonville

Hockenjos ran out of gas about 25 miles outside of Jacksonville, so he pulled his truck to the side of the road and hiked. The first building he came to was a church of predominately black worshipers.

“I looked pretty intimidating, but a lady on the front row came over and asked if I needed anything. She went in the back and got me some peanut butter, crackers and some other things,” Hockenjos said. “The pastor, Ivory Irish, came over and talked to me, so I told him my whole story. He let me speak at the church. He drove me to my truck, filled it up with gas and gave me a boat gas can with five gallons of gas.”

Luke Hockenjos giving his testimony.(Photo: Submitted photo)

Orlando magic

His next stop was Orlando where he had a cousin who had warned him to never come around his family. The cousin got him a hotel room, fed him and talked to him to get a gauge on his relative.

“I’ll never forget the way he looked at me, because he was dumbfounded in the change in me,” Hockenjos said. “He took me to lunch and then to his house. He realized I was a new creation.”

When he ran out of gas outside of Monroe on the way home, the pastor’s old gas can got him to Ruston after he McGyvered a way to get the fuel into his truck. He arrived at his family’s home in time for Thanksgiving.

“I had been gone about three weeks and it was the first time for my family to see me,” he said. “They were glad, but cautious. Only about 3 percent of meth addicts stay sober and about 90 percent relapse. It’s a powerful drug and we all know someone who has relapsed.”

Homeless for Jesus

Hockenjos spent the next several months living in the back of his truck in the FBC parking lot and studying the Bible daily in the church coffee shop called The Depot.

“My mom called it the ‘Jesus Rehab,’” he joked.

And so far it’s worked. He’s healed the relationship with his family members, who purchased what is now called the Hockenjos “Hole In One” Driving Range that he manages. He formed the “Give’em Jesus” ministry, a 501(c)3 business that is big on delivering Bibles where they’re needed. More than 1,600 have been distributed so far.

He preaches and speaks wherever people will have him.

FBC of Ruston pastor Chris Craig has served as the Hockenjos family for nearly 15 years.

“Luke has made a great turnaround in the last few years after truly finding Christ as his Lord and Savior,” Craig said. “He seems to be walking with God strongly, and trying to serve Him faithfully.

“I believe Luke got caught up in chasing the wrong things to try to help him find peace and meaning. As they always do, they left him unfulfilled. Christ is truly filling that void now.”

Chris Craig(Photo: Submitted photo)

On a recent mission trip to Medford, Oregon, with a group from Ellerbe Baptist Church in Shreveport, Hockenjos had a profound effect on two different groups he ministered to.

Thanks to multiple visits to Ruston’s Smoothie King, he found a woman to keep him on track and away from addictions. He and Olivia Vincent of Sulphur will be married Feb. 24 and she plans to attend a school in Shreveport to become a physician’s assistant after graduating from Louisiana Tech.

Lt. Sims has been following Hockenjos closely on Facebook watching videos he posts and keeping a close eye because he knows from his work in narcotics how seldom meth addicts permanently kick the habit.

“I was skeptical, but hopeful at first, that Luke would make it,” Sims said. “In law enforcement, it’s rare for us to see that, but it sure is fulfilling for us when they do. We’re proud Luke is going down the road the going down. I’ve had a couple others apologize, then go right back to it.”

Hockenjos continues the daily fight to remain sober and his mother keeps praying.
“There have been times when in certain situations I could have gone back, but the Lord’s given me a way to stay strong,” said Hockenjos, who has been clean almost three years. “I have an uncle who said that if you give ‘em Jesus, the rest will take care of itself. My ministry keeps growing.”

Finish what you start

Hockenjos didn’t see much action during his senior year of football at Cedar Creek and was ready to quit. But he got busted drinking and his punishment was to finish the season. He started two playoff games for the Cougars, which was the highlight of his athletic career.

“If I had quit, I wouldn’t have experienced that. I can still hear coach Arledge saying you should always finish what you start,” Hockenjos said. “And I tell mothers all the time to never finish praying for your children, because I wouldn’t be where I am today if my mom had quit praying for me.”